Reach in a Cow, and Do What You Got To Do…

First, allow me to thank our supreme leader, Beef Master, for the invitation to help administer the Moo York Times! It is a privilege and honor. With great power comes great responsibility, and I promise to abuse that responsibility!

Now… on to business. While the Beef Master and Udderly Impossible were busy fawning over our cute, enslaved brethren at a local dairy farm last week. I was conducting some much needed recon and paying special attention to how cows are used to fuel us and our economy. If there’s money to be had, man will find a way to have it. Now, it appears that some cow scientists are taking this to a whole new level with a process called Embryo Transfer (ET).

Embryo Transfer (ET) is the process by which embryos from show cows – the best of the best – are… you guessed it… transferred to other surrogate cows. These poor surrogate cows go through the drudgery of pregnancy, so the prima donna show cows don’t have to, and they can stay busy doing what they do – looking glamorous!

Perhaps more importantly, if we consider that a cow can typically carry one embryo at a time, we realize that we may be waiting a long time for the world to be populated with these elite specimen. Enter the magic of “hormone therapy.” A little injection, yadda yadda yadda, and we’ve got cows that can carry upwards of 80 to 90 embryos! These embryos are “extracted” and shipped off to unsuspecting cows all across the world. Domestically, the new born calves are typically used as the matriarchs and patriarchs for new stock. Abroad, these calves are coveted because over a century of intelligent design has resulted in American cows being the top dairy and beef producers in the world.

“It seems so routine to me now — when you just reach in a cow and do what you got to do,” Pugh chuckles. “And she’s kind of an old pro. She just walked in here and stood.” – Dr. Michael Pugh, Westwood Embryo Services

So, the next time you catch a glimmer of an exquisite cow out of the corner of your eye, you may think twice about how he or she came to be.